#but i also love women as a women

[ayumunoya]

I want to be a man so I can love other men as a man 😔✌️

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The squad of all time has arrived on scene.

[thelolarahaii]

DOECHII NISSAN ALTIMA - Swamp Session

[specialagentartemis]

in middle school during my Intense Greek Mythology Phase, Artemis was, as you can likely guess, my best girl. Iphigenia was my OTHER best girl. Yes at the same time.

The story of Iphigenia always gets to me when it's not presented as a story of Artemis being capricious and having arbitrary rules about where you can and can't hunt, but instead, making a point about war.

Artemis was, among other things--patron of hunting, wild places, the moon, singlehood--the protector of young girls. That's a really important aspect she was worshipped as: she protected girls and young women. But she was the one who demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter in order for his fleet to be able to sail on for Troy.

There's no contradiction, though, when it's framed as, Artemis making Agamemnon face what he’s doing to the women and children of Troy. His children are not in danger. His son will not be thrown off the ramparts, his daughters will not be taken captive as sex slaves and dragged off to foreign lands, his wife will not have to watch her husband and brothers and children killed. Yet this is what he’s sailing off to Troy to inevitably do. That’s what happens in war. He’s going to go kill other people’s daughters; can he stand to do that to his own? As long as the answer is no—he can kill other people’s children, but not his own—he can’t sail off to war.

Which casts Artemis is a fascinating light, compared to the other gods of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is really a squabble of pride and insults within the Olympian family; Eris decided to cause problems on purpose, leaving Aphrodite smug and Hera and Athena snubbed, and all of this was kinda Zeus’s fault in the first place for not being able to keep it in his pants. And out of this fight mortal men were their game pieces and mortal cities their prizes in restoring their pride. And if hundreds of people die and hundred more lives are ruined, well, that’s what happens when gods fight. Mortals pay the price for gods�� whims and the gods move on in time and the mortals don’t and that’s how it is.

And women especially—Zeus wanted Leda, so he took her. Paris wanted Helen, so he took her. There’s a reason “the Trojan women” even since ancient times were the emblems of victims of a war they never wanted, never asked for, and never had a say in choosing, but was brought down on their heads anyway.

Artemis, in the way of gods, is still acting through human proxies. But it seems notable to me to cast her as the one god to look at the destruction the war is about to wreak on people, and challenge Agamemnon: are you ready to kill innocents? Kill children? Destroy families, leave grieving wives and mothers? Are you? Prove it.

It reminds me of that idea about nuclear codes, the concept of implanting the key in the heart of one of the Oval Office staffers who holds the briefcase, so the president would have to stab a man with a knife to get the key to launch the nukes. “That’s horrible!,” it’s said the response was. “If he had to do that, he might never press the button!” And it’s interesting to see Artemis offering Agamemnon the same choice. You want to burn Troy? Kill your own daughter first. Show me you understand what it means that you’re about to do.

[dieinct]

i was just talking about this after being wrecked by the discovery that the little elf-goblin fellows my parents/family used to tell me warnings and stories about as a little kid are regionally specific, and that you can trace people's geographic origins by what word they use for "little spirit-fellows who live in your house". no matter what you call them (domovoi, kobolde, brownies, so on); for purposes of this post henceforth "little guys"

i think one of the things that i find frustrating about like, idk, modern animist revivalist movements is that very few of them ime spend a lot of time romanticising and spiritualizing human habitation. obviously, we as a culture need to think more about protecting and defending nature/the earth/so on, but like.

if you don't have room in your heart for making up a little guy who lives in the water heater, or who squats under your stove and makes it run 15 degrees off the programmed temperature, and thinking of him with the same kind of respect/affection as you do for the spirits (or whatever) of the wildlife you interact with like.

genuinely: what are you even doing. you are removing a source of richness and fun and whimsy from your life! like, pip @creekfiend made up the concept of "little guys who live in an airport (and are the reason it's so shitty to be in an airport)" and i already like airports like 30% more just knowing it's the little airport inconvenience guys doing that.

more importantly, like. genuinely: interrogate what parts of the world seem ~rich with spiritual meaning~ to you. what parts of the world are "wild"? what does that make the rest of the world - a chore? a burden? who has to carry that burden?

we're never going to like, "return to nature", because that's nothing and the concept of untouched nature is also nothing; we're always going to have some sort of human habitation and interaction and cultivation with nature. if you can't extend grace and whimsy and genuine and sincere meaning to human habitation, including its inconveniences and annoyances, you are making your own lived experience duller!

notably, most of these kinds of little-guy-spirits historically exist in the parts of human habitation that are partially abandoned, partially removed: haylofts, inside the walls, under the house, in the bathhouse, behind the furnace... i've been thinking a lot about urban wildlife lately, and the animals who make space for themselves in and around human habitation. the "natural" and the "wild" persist inside and around the edges of the "tame" and always, always have. if you have a crawlspace, there's a little spirit who lives there and he's the reason the dryer always eats your socks.

LIVE WHIMSICALLY.

[lotus-pear]

it doesn't matter how babygirl ur fav man is, he will ALWAYS be ten times sexier as a woman

[goldxnfemme]

I finally found an essay that discusses the origins of the word "bulldagger" and its association with black lesbians, hell yeah!

[skellynoodle]

I feel like every time I see a panel of talia al ghul there’s always a veil of vague scary racism,,,, so I just wanted to show her some love

[x-letsbreaksomerules-x]

yuri is so fucking real you guys

[time-woods]

middle aged woman yuri (but human forms)) plus some extra doodles

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Ghouls night out

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[tea-earl-grey]

can 2024 please be the year where we stop acting like Jadzia's bisexuality was subtextual and that her queerness should be treated with the same validity as other common headcanons. i love queer headcanons! i love thinking about gay subtext (intentional or unintentional)! but i cannot possibly understand how kissing a woman, professing your love to her, and risking your future to spend your lives together is somehow subtext. (well i can understand because 1) fandom doesn't like to focus on queer women nearly as much as queer men and 2) seeing queer women who later marry men as somehow not "actually queer" is just. classic biphobia.)

[beatboxing-puppy]

circle x square

[mikuyuuss]

“You'll see my face in every place

But you can't catch me now”

[uncanny-tranny]

Tall trans girl reading this: you aren't too tall for heels. If you want to wear them, wear them proud. There is nothing more spectacular than a tall woman in heels, and nobody can ever take that away from you, not even yourself 🩷🪻

[littlenastieswewhispered]

“buffy ended the show single :)” ok but only because her current love interest just DIED!! (he near quite literally died in her arms! in sacrifice for her!) her last words of the entire series were telling him she loves him and then saying his name in admiration. she isn’t single; she’s a widow.